Collecting Tools for Your Spiritual Toolbox - Light

In my garage I have a plastic container in which I keep a lot of my more commonly used tools.  Living in a rental, I don't have too much use for them.  So, the other day I noticed that the tools were pretty dusty and a few even had some early signs of rust.  Tools tend to be essential instruments only when we have need for them.

Human beings are endowed with set of spiritual tools to aid them in building a grounded, centered space for existing.  Grounded people build sensitive grounded communities with a central focus on a Sacred Center.  How often do you reach into your spiritual tool box?  If it has been awhile since you felt any need for a spiritual fix, then your spiritual tools have likely gotten misplaced or fallen into disrepair like those in my garage.

This blog, as you can see by the date of my last entry, has been sitting dormant gathering cyber dust and rust.  For the next few weeks heading into the end of the Christian calendar and into Advent I will be writing about different spiritual tools that you possess, which you may have forgotten were there.

Today I am going to remind us about perhaps the single most fundamental tool we have.

You are the light of the world....  Matthew 5:14

Every human being is born with a light inside.  This light is the basic indefinable energy that is the driving power we refer to as "life."  When a baby is born, God strikes a flint and that spark causes the diaphragm to contract and the first breath grabs hold.  The inner metabolic furnace holds that light and it will continue to burn until the lifespan of that person expires.

We forget we have this God light within. Like other tools it can get ignored and if we don't feed it that spirit light dims.  A good way to keep it bright is simply by focusing on it.  The following meditation might be helpful. 

1. Take a few deep, slow breaths into the area where your heart is located in the center of your chest.
2. Imagine a bright light - God's light - in the center of your chest and like a flame it brightens with each in-breath.
3. With each in-breath the light grows brighter, warmer, and larger.  
4. Continue breathing until the light is filling you.
5. Imagine that everything troubling you, all your anxieties, worries, troubles are a dark cloud.
6. On the next in-breath, breathe in the dark cloud and see your God light evaporate the cloud.
7. Continue with this meditation as long as you wish.  When you are finished express your gratitude to God and go on about your day or evening.  

Christmas Eve

For unto us this day is born in the City of David a child....

Life in the Roman Empire circa 30 BCE was probably a grind for most of the population.  Getting enough to eat and keeping a roof over one's head probably occupied a major portion of daily life.  While there have been thousands of innovations and the number of material possessions have increased exponentially, for many the same two basic worries - paying bills especially for food and shelter -- remain a basic background daily concern.  It is difficult to put one's focus on the spiritual dimension when you are unsure from where your next check is coming and how much it will be.

So, given the spiritual vs tangible living split, what does Christmas Eve really add to your life?  For too many it adds a weight to the cost of living by having to buy gifts so as not to appear too pathetic. For many others it harbors the discomfort of long-standing family conflicts.  Many hate the holidays where people who haven't gotten along in forever get packed around a dinner table in a too-small space with the portends of a ticking time bomb going off. All through the season Christmas carols jingle in the background while our pockets are being emptied subliming the Ho Ho Ho of good cheer and Hark! the herald angels sing.  That may be the closest you get to spirituality even if you're religious.  Yet, wherever our heads and worry is directed, Christ Consciousness still exists.  That Consciousness is grounded in the imaginings and work of sages and wise prophets through eons; imaginings of peace, love, and eternal bliss.  How do we capture those imaginings for ourselves?  Or, do we just allow ourselves to succumb to the catatonic holiday robotic movements that get us through this paradoxical time warp called "The Holidays?"  

Much of the "spiritual not religious" popularity sprinkled through society is a recognition, at least, that the spiritual does have a place in our lives.  Spirit is really about finding meaning.  Spirit always has been about locating the higher, deeper, broader, life-enhancing meaning of life.  Christmas represents the incarnational in-breaking of the ancient rites of life-giving reconciliation and progress in expunging conflict, hostility, and difficulty from life.  To tune in and find it requires a desire to claim a space in which for it to arrive.  Christmas is the recognized space we strive to claim.  It travels on the waves of silence and beauty.  We join it figuratively by kneeling at the simple rustic side of a manger crude in concert with lowly beast and simple furnishing, a star overhead -- or even the overhead moon-silhouetted jingle of a passing sleigh and 8 tiny reindeer.  Those moments are the touch-points between the divine and the human.  They instill a memory, a longing to return to peace and goodwill that can last a year if we just set aside the silent time daily to revisit the memory and bask in it's gentle presence. The more we re-visit those memories, be it for 2 minutes or 60 minutes daily, the more we will find them influencing and pushing aside the worries and anxiety that so commonly occupy uncomfortably large parts of our lives.  That is the deeper underlying purpose of these kind of spirit-based annual observances -- to re-orient and put the whole on the same page again. 

Merry Christmas!  Peace and Goodwill to All!

Welcome!

Welcome one another, therefore, just as Christ has welcomed you, for the glory of God. -- Romans 15:7

Welcome is one of the nicest words.  It is full of hospitality and portends receiving what we need, be it shelter, food, a resting place, warmth, acceptance, or tea and good conversation.  Paul implies here that when we welcome another, we welcome the beauty and wonder of God into our midst.  He explicitly says to welcome as Christ welcomed us.  Have you ever thought about the ways Christ has welcomed you?  Have you ever sensed being welcomed by Christ?  If you have had that feeling/sense, it is what incarnation feels like.  Incarnation is what we celebrate at Christmas and what all the looking for it during Advent is about.  Incarnation is where our needs and hopes, which most often exist as a thought in our head or as some ethereal concept, become real, experienced, and appreciated.  Often the depth of appreciation we feel is tied to how in need we are when someone welcomes us and provides us just what we were needing.

The holidays are often a time when people are more generous.  Food banks fill up.  Community meals are served for the hungry.  Money is donated to charitable organizations.  All of these acts are acts of welcome.  All of them are ways Christ welcomes each of us -- in our own place, in our own particular need.  It is always odd to me that welcoming and generosity take place so readily during the holidays, while during the rest of the year there is often more grumbling and complaining -- about the poor and homeless (in particular.) 

Welcome isn't just an act that we do for or receive from others.  Many of us could use learning how to welcome ourselves.  Anxiety, stress, regrets, feeling unworthy are all emotional needs where a welcome would be welcome.  There is a meditation practice taught by Catherine Bourgeault called Welcoming Prayer.  It is a meditation process where you take what you are feeling and you spend some quiet time scanning for where in your body you are feeling it.  Feelings have a residence in various locations in our bodies.  When we've located it welcome it and then thank that body part for welcoming and holding those feelings for us.  We stay with those thoughts as long as it takes to appreciate what that body part does for us when we are stressed.  Finally, after our thanks are given we can take our leave and let it go.  I have found it a remarkably powerful practice.  Oftentimes, just connecting the body with the feeling is all it takes to remove the distress that the thought/feeling was causing.

Prayer:
May we welcome the stranger, the friend, our own beloved self and pour us a cup of tea by the fire of Christ's love.  Amen.

Actionable Suggestions:

1. Welcome yourself with a spa day, or by giving yourself a break from this busy season. 
2. Think of a friend or someone who you haven't seen for awhile and give them a call or an invitation.